The Sacrifice (6 page)

‘OK.’ Carly grinned as she
hurried off, evidently relieved that she wasn’t going to have to go out on to the
streets. Ed leant over the wall to shout down to her as she crossed the causeway.
‘And tell Jordan what’s happening!’

Ed now surveyed his war party: Kyle, Macca,
Hayden, plus the four card players he’d dragged out of the Bloody Tower.
He’d picked them just because they looked like they weren’t doing anything,
but he realized they’d make a good team.

Adele was a tough, chunky girl who could win
a fight with almost any boy. It always amused Ed that Adele, as well as being one of his
best fighters, was also one of the girliest girls in the Tower. Her hair was always full
of sparkly hairclips and pins and she didn’t bother with armour or protective
leather, preferring layers of bright colours and pretty patterns, beads and badges and
bangles. To see her charging into a fight, all in pink and swinging her club like a
baseball batter, was really something. She was very popular with the little kids in the
Tower and you’d often see her walking around with several of them following after
her, like a mother duck with her ducklings.

Partha and Kinsey were good, fast runners
and often worked as a team with Hayden. Sometimes running was a more useful skill than
fighting. Then there was Will. Will was smart and cool-headed, reliable, a good balance
to Macca who could be cheeky and undisciplined.

‘OK. There’s eight of us,’
Ed said. ‘Should be enough. If it looks too dangerous we won’t engage.
Follow my lead
and do exactly as I say. We haven’t lost anyone in
weeks and I’m not losing anyone on my watch.’

The kids nodded, their eyes shining and
glassy. That familiar look of fear and excitement.

In less than a minute they were jogging
north across the open space next to the ticket offices. It was a cold morning, the sky
grey. Spots of rain were starting to fall. Ed realized he wasn’t dressed for this.
He should have put on a waterproof jacket of some sort, but hadn’t been fully
awake when Kyle had grabbed him.

Litter blew across the car park and pigeons
wandered around, nosing through the piles of crap that had collected in every corner.
When it rained heavily, the streets flooded. All the drains were blocked and there was
no one to unblock them.

Ahead, the gleaming glass top of the Gherkin
rose above the older buildings below it, including the ornate Trinity House, which
looked like someone had looted a load of pillars, arches and statues from ancient Rome
and piled them up as high as they could, like a hyper kid with a Lego set. It was
completely OTT and Ed’s favourite building around here.

He didn’t have time to admire it now,
though. His mind was on other things. Adrenalin was pumping through his system. He was
preparing to fight or flee, depending on what they found. The others were jittery,
red-faced, working themselves up, but Ed felt a familiar calm begin to settle over him,
a weird detachment. A coldness. When it came time to fight – if it came time – he knew
what would happen. He would explode into a ruthless killing frenzy. All the time,
though, a part of him would be sitting back watching. Watching that other Ed. Ed the
killer. It
frightened his friends when they witnessed it. In battle he
was the most ferocious of them all. It’s what kept crazy Kyle loyal to him, always
at his side.

The main difference between the two of them
was that Kyle enjoyed all this running, fighting, hunting, killing.

Ed hated it.

Avoided it if he possibly could.

But a kid in peril. Chased by sickos. That
was something he couldn’t avoid.

As they neared the main road, they could
tell that there were sickos close. They were hit by the smell before they saw them.
Sour, rotten, pungent; a mix of dog shit, bad drains, food left out of the fridge,
Haribo sweets, toilet cleaner and armpits.

Ed raised his hand and his team slowed down,
moving more cautiously now, not wanting to run headlong into a swarm of grown-ups. You
could always smell them, but you rarely heard them until you were on top of them, they
made so little noise.

The kids turned the corner and there they
were: sickos. About thirty of them, some wandering in the road, but most gathered in the
porch at the front of a Victorian office building next to an American-style rib joint
called Bodean’s. The sickos were clamouring round the doors and windows, trying to
get in.

There was a subway entrance on the other
side of the arched doorway, and as Ed watched, three more sickos emerged from it. There
must have been a nest of them down there. Jordan regularly organized sorties from the
Tower to flush sickos out of the many tunnels in the area and the kids were always
trying to block them up. It would take them ages to make the area totally safe,
though.

Ed quietly told his team to hold back. They
hadn’t been spotted yet. The sickos were too intent on trying to get into the
building and Ed wanted to keep it that way as long as possible.

‘I thought we’d cleaned out all
the nests around here,’ he whispered to Kyle. They were squatting down, trying to
keep a low profile.

‘So did I,’ said Kyle.
‘But as quick as we get rid of them, they come back again.’

‘We’ll bring a full unit later
and properly sort that subway out. For now we’ve got to see what they’re
after, deal with them and get back into the Tower quick.’

‘Why don’t we just leave
it?’ said Kyle. ‘Go back now, round up an army and come back and twat the
lot of them?’

‘Maybe we should.’

It wasn’t like Kyle to avoid a fight,
which told Ed that he wasn’t sure about this. And if Kyle wasn’t sure of
attacking then it was bad. Maybe there were too many sickos to take on.

‘This ain’t our problem,’
Kyle added.

Just then a girl appeared at a first-floor
window, opened it and looked down at the sickos squabbling at the door below. She looked
understandably frightened. She then looked over towards the Tower. She hadn’t seen
Ed’s squad where they were hiding. She put her hand to her mouth and called
out.

‘Help me!’

Ed sighed. ‘It just became our
problem.’

‘Why?’ said Kyle. ‘We
don’t know her. She ain’t one of us.’

‘You can be a right shit sometimes,
Kyle.’

‘Yeah, I can, can’t I?’
Kyle sniggered.

‘I thought you were always up for a
fight.’

‘I’ve got one rule, Ed. Never
start a fight you can’t win.’

‘That is a girl, Kyle. A kid. And any
kid is one of us.’

‘All right,’ said Kyle.
‘Let’s play Batman then. Charge in to her rescue.’

‘We need more of a plan than
that.’ Ed put his hand on Hayden’s shoulder.

‘Hayden. You take Partha and Kinsey.
You’re the fastest runners. I want you to get the attention of the sickos over
there. Look tasty, yeah? I want them dribbling.’

‘Here he goes,’ said Kyle.
‘Ed with his plans.’

Ed ignored Kyle and carried on giving Hayden
her instructions. ‘Get as many of them to go after you as you can. Lead them away
eastwards, along Tower Hill. You’ll have to play it carefully. Keep close enough
so that they don’t get bored and come back here, but not so close that you risk
getting caught.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said
Hayden. ‘We won’t be getting too close to them. Trust me.’

‘Go on then and shout out to the girl.
Let her know we’re going to help her. Tell her to stay put until we get in there.
We’ll stay hidden here until the odds are a little better.’

Hayden, Partha and Kinsey moved out of
hiding and gingerly crossed the road, creeping nearer to the siege. Ed watched as first
one then another of the sickos stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at
them.

The sickos were a mixed bunch of all ages,
ranging from older teenagers to mothers and fathers in their sixties. You never saw them
much older than that. Ed assumed that pensioners had found it hardest to survive the
illness and the madness that came on its heels.

As well as being mixed ages, this lot were also
in various different stages of decay. Some looked hardly touched, just pale-skinned and
red round the nose and eyes, with dry lips and the odd spot or rash. If he hadn’t
known better Ed might have thought they were suffering from nothing worse than the
flu.

Others looked like animated corpses, their
flesh green and rotten, eaten away, with horrible growths and boils and blisters. Hair
missing, ears and noses missing, lips gone.

He knew they weren’t zombies. They
weren’t the living dead. But a lot of the kids called them that.

It suited them.

His head was aching. Was he doing the right
thing? He had casually asked Hayden and the others to go and act as decoys. He knew how
tense they’d be feeling as the sickos took the bait. Hayden was fast and not
stupid. She’d know what to do and could easily outrun these diseased creeps.

It was still dangerous, though.

Hayden called out to the girl in the window,
told her what was happening. She nodded frantically.

More and more sickos were becoming aware of
the new arrivals. One by one they began to leave off their assault on the office doors
and focus their attention on the three girls.

And now they started to move, sniffing the
air, salivating, growing agitated by the scent of young flesh. Some shook violently;
others hissed; one actually had a fit and lay in the road thrashing about like a landed
fish.

‘Go on,’ Ed murmured.
‘Fresh meat. Go get it … ’

Hayden’s team had stopped, scared to
go any closer; they waited nervously for the sickos to come to them.

‘Hold on,’ said Ed, ‘just
a bit longer. Let them all get a good sniff of you.’

One sicko, bolder and fitter than the rest,
moved ahead of the shuffling pack, striding on long legs, head held high. Finally he
broke into a sort of half-run, stiff-legged and awkward, like a drunk trying to look
sober.

At last Hayden’s nerve broke and she
retreated, moving quickly backwards. It seemed to trigger something in the bulk of the
sickos; they came alive, keen to be first to the kill. They moved as a pack, keeping
pace with the long-legged father. Hayden was forced to run now, she and her team looking
back over their shoulders to make sure they were being followed.

Ed’s group had ducked down completely
out of sight. Kyle was still caressing his axe, a big heavy thing he’d recently
discovered in a storeroom. It was designed for crushing and splitting armour in battle.
Very different to the executioner’s axe he’d been ready to use the other
day.

Or had he? How much of that had been for
show? He was a vicious hulk, with a cruel sense of humour. The best boy to have by your
side in a fight, though.

Kyle leant over and sneaked a look round the
end of the wall.

‘Well?’ Ed asked.

‘They ain’t all left. Some have
held back. Too interested in the girl.’

‘What d’you reckon? Can we take
them?’

‘Reckon so,’ said Kyle, and he
turned to face the others. ‘You up for it?’

They all nodded, gripping their weapons
tighter. Macca had a crossbow. He slotted a bolt into it, shuffled up the wall to see
over the top and levelled it at the sickos.

‘You want me to come with or hold
back?’ he asked. ‘Pick ’em off from here?’

‘Hold back, Macca.’ Ed gave the
order. ‘We need someone to stay outside and be our eyes and ears on the street.
Will, you’ve got a crossbow too, you stay with him. We’re gonna have to go
inside and I don’t think your bows’ll be a lot of use in there.’

‘Sure, OK,’ said Will and he
took his place next to Macca, aiming over the wall. Ed, Kyle and Adele joined them,
quickly taking in the situation.

‘Wait for it,’ Ed whispered.
There were three stragglers limping after Hayden’s group that looked like they
might give up and turn back. Ed pointed to them, and Macca and Will got the message.
They switched their aim and loosed a couple of shots. One bolt thudded into the back of
a fat mother, who grunted and collapsed into a bollard. The second bolt took out a
waddling father and, before the last sicko knew what was happening, Ed skittered over
lightly, moving fast on the balls of his feet, and plunged his sword into his side, just
below the ribs. As the father gasped and dropped to his knees, Ed stabbed him again in
the neck.

Ed looked down the road, checking to make
sure that the rest of the sickos were still following Hayden’s group. They were.
Like a pack of foxhounds, they were doggedly trudging along the north side of the Tower.
Hayden should easily be able to outrun them and then double back to the Tower gates.

He left the three downed sickos to bleed to
death and went back for Kyle and Adele. Adele was chewing something. She looked keyed
up, her hands tight on her heavy iron club.

Ed waited for Will and Macca to reload and
fire two more bolts into the mob at the doorway and then he was off. He couldn’t
wait for them to reload again. Crossbows were
powerful and accurate,
but had a low rate of fire. He wanted to move quickly and get it over with. It was
always possible that there were more sickos down in the subway. The longer the kids
stayed outside the castle walls, the more dangerous it became.

Kyle and Adele followed him over the road,
hoping to move in before the rest of the sickos got a handle on what was happening. As
they sprinted towards the buildings, Ed counted heads. There were seven of them still
there that he could see. Could be more. It was cramped in the porch and the sickos were
battering at the glass doors, crowding each other out. One had a crossbow bolt in his
leg, but was ignoring it.

Seven.

Not too hard to deal with.

The girl was still at the window. Watching
but staying silent. Ed wondered why she hadn’t simply found another way out. There
must be more than one door to the place after all. He knew all too well, though, that
when you’re scared, you don’t always think straight.